pecado

We invite you to sign this petition: https://tiny.cc/kulfees asking KU Leuven to stop the increase of the tuition fees for non European students and special programmes. Until recently, in KU Leuven (Louvain, Belgium) everyone was charged the same tuition fee: 922 EUR. Now in some faculties non European students should pay up to 6000 EUR. The reasons given are multiple, however it is evident that the real reason should either be that they want more money or they really dislike poor international students. This change of tuition fees puts the university at the risk of losing its international environment, for as many of the current international students have said: they would not have been able to come if they had increased the fees before. Moreover, some programmes have increased their fees for everyone, which introduces the risk that this university become like the ones in UK or USA. This could be probably the case of many of you, that might have had the chance to go to study in Belgium, but having to pay 6000 EUR extra takes away any possibility of doing it. If that is the case, we invite you to sign and express your disapproval. Now, I know that most here are from USA, and a very possible reaction will be to say that all that is still cheaper than in USA. However, you should understand that Europe is not the USA, Germany has completely free universities, Switzerland charges around 1300 EUR to everyone, Spain 400 EUR, etcetera. I invite you to read this document, in case you want to know with a lot of detail the context of this problem: https://www.studenten.xyz/dossier-about-the-issue-of-the-tuition-fees-in-ku-leuven-by-the-leuven-students-against-tuition-fees/ We want to invite you to sign and to express your ideas about this, not only because you are potential students, but because many of you might feel alluded by KU Leuven's authorities, who have said that they want to attract more and "better" students, and that increasing the tuition fees will do that. Supposedly some "marketing research" they did showed that the prospective student from the USA prefers an expensive university over a cheap university, and does not attend a cheap university, because he thinks that just because it is cheap it is very probably bad. We consider that this does not make any sense at all, or do you actually think like that? We consider that whoever judges the quality of a university only by its price tag is not smart enough to be considered a "better" student, and therefore they are not achieving their objective of attracting better students. Needless to say, the idea that they want "better" international students has been felt by the international students as something quite insulting: are the current ones not good enough? So, if you, probably a potential student from the USA, could express that this idea is senseless, that people don't like to give away money, that poor people exist in the USA too, that you do not feel more attracted just because now it is more expensive, and that they should not limite their concept of "international student" to "student from USA"... it would be very useful. You can sign the change.org petition here: https://tiny.cc/kulfees You can also talk and discuss with others about this issue in our facebook and twitter. Thank you very much for your attention.

It is not worth the $50000

The world does not spin around van Fraassen.

They all speak English. Strangely the world is not only in English, and most of the greatest philosophy was not made in English.

What is the bank?

You just had the experience of being admitted or rejected. According to what you see this time, would you say that the GRE was crucial to get admitted? Do you think that you were rejected somewhere only because of that low GRE? What is the minimum GRE score they want? What is your general conclusion about the damn GRE?

This is so sad.

It is very expensive.

Why did you decline? Which other university did you prefer?

You are welcome.

Or just describe the person defending the other side as an obstinate in disguise, ignore all of his arguments, send him to read, and rest assured that you are right because you did not permit any doubt about your believes. Now, seriously, your criterion to dismiss ideas is, as @brush said, against the spirit of philosophy. Let me share you this quote from Stuart Mill's essay on liberty: "[To control the expression of opinion] is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in or opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind". And this longer quote from the same essay: "We have now recognised the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate. First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions, that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience". I was not worthy of your essays, so I think I am neither worthy to write you an essay. So I give up. I only hope that these quotes inspire you to think that maybe you can be wrong 1% of the time, and that perhaps it might not be the best idea to censor languages, expressions and ideas, even if they are so dreadfully damaging and discriminatory that they mysteriously harm unwitting people if they are used in the most innocent message of hope and good desires.

Could you please explain why this was a trick and how it works?

Sincerely, I could say the same about you. You exploded because I did not use the language as you like. And you are not being attacked as a person, I was only trying to inspire hope for my fellows, and you degenerated my words, implying that I was fomenting misogyny with my language. I did not do that, and I am arguing trying to show you that. Indeed, it is annoying to be blamed and accused "indirectly" of being offensive against women. You may adjust your language as you like, so do I. You try to draw attention to an issue, I am trying to do that too. Strangely, when you do it you are the sacred defenders of the unquestionable truths, and when I do it, I am only an annoying intransigent person. I really doubt that what you say about the journals is true, but if it is, that does not make your "arguments" more convincing, and if you are trying to imply that as a philosopher I am forced to adopt those modifications to the language, then you are completely wrong. Philosophy and academia are different things, and the academia has a lot of problems, which I, as a philosopher, am not willing to indulge. If some specific journal rejects an article only for that reason, I would be glad to never publish there, as I would not want to be associated with a "philosophical" journal that obligates you to embrace its morality and political correctness. You are right, I would more strongly desire to possess and use liberty of expression and liberty of thought, before attempting to build "inclusivity" among a marginalised population, because I am sure that that "inclusivity" can not exist if those liberties are suppressed. The issue of the marginalization of women CAN be studied from those perspectives, and, more importantly, CAN BE QUESTIONED. I can not only doubt about the commandment of altering any "remnant" of the patriarchal society, but I can doubt about the relevance of that marginalization of women, compared to other problems of society -in example, a rich woman is more accepted and respected than a poor man-. If you consider the materialism, the marginalization of women is a consequence of capitalism, and it will not cease to exist until the capitalism stop (Karl Marx says it, literally); what you are trying to do is an ersatz egalitarian society where there is fake "inclusivity" only because the thoughts and expressions of the people are controlled in such a way that is impossible to express the contrary, yet, the poor women are as poor as the poor men, but that does not matter, as long as they both suffer the same misery of being a proletarian in the capitalism. And you may repudiate materialism, and your ideas would still have the problems signalled by George Orwell in 1984; you can't make a revolution degenerating the language, and forbidding any possible thought or doubt. You call me weird because I do not follow the order of modifying my speech and my thoughts that some small and specific group of people commanded, and you may be right, it may be something strange to do, but I would still do it, specially if I do not agree with that order, and the commanders are intransigent and closed to any discussion about it. I wrote a lengthy response trying to initiate an intellectual debate about this issue, and it was completely ignored. Again, I could say the same about you, word by word: "I mean, it just sucks when people get so personally defensive about these kinds of 'objections', especially because I don't consider this to be an objection at all". I am not insensible to the marginalization of others. You don't know me. To argue against something is not upsetting, and it definitively does not undermines the experiences of marginalization nor furthers the marginalization. To argue against something is simply the usual activity of philosophy. It is an element of the dialectical process that a philosopher makes to purify his believes (oops! I did it again!) confronting them with the believes and the criterion of another person, which may illuminate the philosopher and make him note something that he never noted meditating alone. This is the worth of the philosophical discussions, and you are demeaning it, by thinking that your prohibitionist conceptions are unquestionable and mandatory for everyone. I am not attacking nor ignoring "the feminist perspective". To not blindly acquiesce with something is not to attack it. I am only acting as a philosopher, questioning the assumptions of the people, and being amazed for the reality and what I experience everyday, always something new or astonishing. Today, you dazzled me, with your consistency: while you ignore completely what is my sex, and despite all your theoretical paraphernalia about gender issues, you called me "him", which means that you just either did exactly what I did, which is using "the male as a neutral", or that you think that such a hard to tame person must be a man, because only a man would not unquestioningly agree with your feminist positions. Although this is only a commentary, because that does not matter too much, and thinking that that dismisses your feminist theories would be a fallacy. Please realise that my attitude is just a philosophical one, and that if you want to convince me -or any rational person- about your ideas, you need to argue and discuss instead of just calling me an insensitive person.

Did they offer you a scholarship? Can you explain the details of your scholarship?

Maybe they are putting you in the waiting list. It is good to have not listened yet, when you see that the others are being rejected.

You are lucky to have those operas available. I only have strange contemporary-nationalist operas right now near me, and they are annoying.

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

And what is the problem with that? Old hat, new tricks.

It is amazing how much damage I did when all I wanted to express was a sentiment of hope and good desires to my fellows. Nonetheless, I can not acquiesce with your criticism. Something that is obsolete or archaic is something that is not commonly done or that has no utility in a contemporary context. I have read and listened contemporary speakers, in many contexts, and I can say that talking as I did is definitively not archaic nor obsolete. The common people, and most of the not so common people, use the "masculine" generic subject, as I did. You say that you have talked with women complaining about them. I have not. You may think that that is because I live in another place than yours, with another language, and another context. But there are women here too, and the historic discrimination against them was terrible too. Guess what my language is? It is Spanish, a language where that "masculine" generic element is not only in the subject, but in half of the sentences, including many that talk about objects, and the plural third persons. Yet I have not ever listened nor read a single complain, from the common people, and most of the not so common people, about the genre of the generic subjects. In fact, the only people that I have read complaining about it are SOME feminist persons. You say that the women are conditioned to feel like that, while men are not, but all the women I have met does not seem to feel like that -and all of them speak like that-. Yes, of course, it might be different, and you may say that I am not living in USA's society, but I have been there, and I have read and listened a lot of things produced there, and yet I do not find that complain nor that discrimination feeling when they talk like that. Yes, I have read this complain before, but only, again, from SOME feminist persons. So, all this makes me believe that you are right, perhaps, in that people feel offended by something if they are educated to feel offended by it. And in fact, in my own experience in life, the only people that feel offended by this way of talking are SOME feminist persons. And I insist in saying SOME, because not every feminist I have met acts like that. I think, therefore, that the origin of the feeling of offence is their feminist education, and if something needs to be changed is their predisposition to feel offended for it. In fact, the offensiveness of language exists only because the speakers believe in it, and a "profanity" is only a profanity because the people give it the quality of being offensive. In this case, I see that a very specific set of people -the feminists of the difference- are feeling offended by that kind of language, as they are the only ones that attribute it implications of "superiority of men" and "detriment of women", even if the people talking does not think those things. And I see that they try to convince other people to join them in their modification of language. But, in my sincere opinion, I feel it is very unfair to force everyone else to talk like they like only because they feel offended for something. I may have something against the word "between", perhaps my dog died trapped "between" a car and a road, so I feel very sad and offended when someone uses the word "between", because it makes me cry as I remember my poor dog smashed between those things. However, you would call me silly if I started a campaign to remove that word from the dictionary and ban it from the books, forcing everybody to say "betwixt" instead, as that would be the only alternative that would not hurt my feelings. This is the same problem. Some persons are feeling offended for some kind of language, and they try to change it, but the truth is that the common speakers do not feel offended by it, including most women, and that is the case until those feminist educate other persons to feel offended by that. I call this absurd, and I even dare to remark that perhaps those feminists are doing more harm to the women that the common speakers that use the generic masculine subject, because those women would have never felt offended if it weren't for those feminists. They taught them to feel bad about it. Yes, you can play with the words and form a sentence whose meaning be clearly offensive for women due to its use of the generic masculine subject. But that is only made on purpose, and it is evident when someone does it that way; no one else use it thinking it is going to be offensive. And this takes me to another important detail that you have not thought about: Is it not unfair to attribute meanings or implications to the words of the people when they are clearly not trying to give those meanings or implications? Is it not against the philosophy and the logic to act like that? Because that seems, to my best logical interpretation, an fallacy; you are changing the meanings of the words of the person you are criticising. Yes, it MIGHT be discouraging and disheartening to read a description that uses only "he"/"him"/"his", and so one in every situation imaginable, for some people -specially those feminist persons-, but that those not make it better to refrain from using the male pronoun INDISCRIMINATELY (what a irony this adjective is!). I should not modify all my speech and my thoughts -because I talk in my thoughts too- only because some people feel offended by it, there should be more to think about before proceeding to make this modification. Most people would feel offended if you told them that they are wrong, I have seen that before, but would you agree then to modify your language in such a manner that no one ever, in even the most indirect and unintended way, in any possible situation, feel that they might be wrong in what they believe after listening anything you say? I would not. I am more worried about the "orwellian" nuances that the feminist speech is taking, and how facile is to make some people -specially some "philosophers" (ironically)- acquiesce with whatever they say or order.

No, it does not. As the other readers have already recognised, I was talking about a "generic" subject, so there was not ambiguity and much less such an implication. The discourse was specific and understandable, at least in its use of pronouns, and the proof is that they, the same people that objected, clearly understood, and I bet you did too.

Could you please explain me why it is archaic, and specially, what misogyny has it facilitated? Also would it not be too twisted to use "they", as it is plural; and why would using "she" be preferable?

Why did you?

Most of us applied to many universities, and the overlaps between our options is very big, and more if the university is well known or desired. So, it is very probable that the guy that was admitted to the school A, will be admitted to the school B, C, D, E and F. Maybe not all of his options, but more than one perhaps. He was outstanding between the whole applicants, and as many applicants will be the same at other schools, he will probably be outstanding at that set too. But he can only attend one school, so he will have to reject admission to all the other ones. Therefore it is very probable that the schools admit some students from the wait lists or the some of the not notified students. And more important, your chances of getting into any school are not really 10/300 (≈3.3%) but higher. In example, in the most extreme circumstance where only the same 300 students apply to the same 6 schools, each school may admit only 10, but in sum, the 6 schools admit 60, and those 60 have to be unique students. So, in that case, your odds are actually 60/300 (≈20%). 20% is a far better odd than 3.3%, now it seems less than winning the lottery, and more like winning a little raffle between 5 friends. And your actual odd might be higher, because I considered the worst case where a school admits only 10 and get 300 solicitudes; many of your schools might actually get far less applicants, and the less the applicants the higher your chances. So keep hoping, this will not end until you receive your last rejection letter. And even then, you will live another year, you could try again, and with better preparation, now knowing how to take that damn GRE and how to cajole everyone you have to cajole.

Do not be so pessimist, I can see in your sign that you have many universities in red with a note that says "presumed". Do not presume, everything can happen, so please do not assume things.